Kayleigh Roberts

By now, we're all familiar with facial recognition tech. What was once the stuff of near-future science fiction is now a real part of our everyday lives. Facebook recommends friends to tag in pictures. Your phone sorts pictures by the faces of the people in them. It's a whole thing.

credit:
nensuria/iStock/GettyImages

Now, Google has announced that your furry friends will also be subject to such sorting. Google explained the innovation in a blog post earlier this week:

"When you want to look back on old photos of Oliver as a puppy or Mr. Whiskers as a kitten, you no longer need to type “dog” or “cat” into search in Google Photos. Rolling out in most countries today, you’ll be able to see photos of the cats and dogs now grouped alongside people, and you can label them by name, search to quickly find photos of them, or even better, photos of you and them. This makes it even easier to create albums, movies, or even a photo book of your pet."

You'll now be able to search by breed or even by emoji to find pictures of your pets (and of all those random animals you snap pictures of in public — no shame). One downside is that if you have multiples of the same breed, the app might have a hard time telling them apart (baby steps, after all).